Scholars for Peace in the Middle East has written a good analysis of the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement against Israel on college campuses. It includes their recent and troubling tactics, which often resemble Brown Shirt methods of intimidation.

Debra Burlingame is the sister of one of the airline pilots who died on 9-11. Charles Burlingame was the pilot of the plane that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon. Tonight Debra appeared on Megyn Kelly's Fox News show. Megyn Kelly is one of the most courageous cable news talk show hosts because she is unafraid to talk about militant Islam, and she is unafraid to stand up to the bullies at the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR). Ms Burlingame is also courageous because she is unafraid to speak out on the ideology that killed her brother and 3,000 other people on 9-11. As she said this evening, the terrorists who killed her brother and took down his plane were screaming, "Allahu Akbar" as they committed their heinous act.

Because Debra is unafraid to speak out, the Council on American Islamic Relations has attempted to pressure the 9-11 Memorial Museum to remove her from their foundation because she is an "Islamophobe".

How dare they?

This the museum has refused to do.

So is Debra "Islamophobic" as CAIR says? Since that term implies a certain irrationality, how do you say that one whose brother was murdered in the name of Islam is "irrational"?

By the same token, is an Egyptian Coptic Christian whose church has been burned down, whose daughter has been abducted and forced to convert to Islam, irrational if he or she fears Islam?

How about the husband of the Sudanese Christian woman who is under a sentence of death by hanging as we speak?

How about the parents of those 300 Nigerian schoolgirls, mostly Christian, who have been abducted by Boko Haram?

How about the Baha'i in Iran who have been persecuted by the Islamic regime?

How about the Syrian Christians who are being hunted down and killed by those rebels that we are supporting?

How about the Pakistani Christians who are being falsely accused of blasphemy, arrested, and put on trial for their lives?

How about the Jews in Europe who are being assaulted, insulted, and spit upon by young Muslim male immigrants to the point that they are emigrating in droves?

Irrational? Bigots?

If the bullies at CAIR want to confront hate, they need look no further than their own mirror.

For CAIR, which is a supporter of the US-designated terror group Hamas, to demand that Debra Burlingame be removed from the 9-11 Museum is tantamount to the SS Alumni Association demanding that Simon Wiesenthal be fired.

"Life is an attitude. If a teenager starts off their adult life with the
right attitude, they can overcome any difficulties that come their way.
The Admiral knows the culture he needs to teach and enforce to make
superior people. Make your bed."

Now to the video and speech you MUST watch below. It is outstanding. One thought from me is this: What we learn starting at home and within our own families is where this all really begins. Changing the world is all fine and good but how do you or I get there? I have ALWAYS paid it forward, always.

Some people want to really change the world and I say may the good Lord watch over them and bless them with in this mission. Others, like me try to change the 'world' with kindness, acts of love and doing this, for me on the most local level as possible.

Watch, listen and learn and tell me if you did not find this a very positive speech. PatriotUSA

McRaven drew from his training to tell the students the 10 ways they could change the world.

Here are just a few of them:

He started off by telling them to make their bed because:

“If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.”

He described the importance of finding someone else to help you paddle:

“You can’t change the world
alone—you will need some help— and to truly get from your starting point
to your destination takes friends, colleagues, the good will of
strangers and a strong coxswain to guide them.”

He let them know that SEALS do not check their privilege, saying:

“SEAL training was a great
equalizer. Nothing mattered but your will to succeed. Not your color,
not your ethnic background, not your education and not your social
status.”

Admiral McRaven covered seven other areas, as
well. One thing’s clear from his outstanding speech: It may have been
one of hundreds of commencement addresses, but it also doubles as some
incredible life advice for anyone.

One would think that we have have enough wilderness, national parks, monuments set aside right now.

This is PERSONAL. This is the region where I was born and this is where my Mom lived the last 20 years of her life. I know this region well. I know the Organ Mountains really well. I have hiked in these mountains a lot in my past, A LOT.

This is personal and proclaiming over 500,00 acres as a new monument and park with wilderness designation is nothing but a federally backed land grab. The drug cartels and smuggling operations must be drooling with anticipation. A 'paved highway' will be handed to them by the Obama administration. Perfect for them, a horrible dilemma for local law enforcement agencies and ranchers, not to mention a lot of people. Now this land will closed off to vehicles, mining, mineral and energy development. Illegal alien invaders will of course obey all the rules and regulations withing the new monument, right? Just like criminals will quit getting, using guns in crimes after areas become gun free zones or zones of stupidity.

Impact from humans in this area is minimal to begin with so why rope off over 500,00 acres? Because the feds and environazis can, they will and they will continue to do so until we stop them. But wait, I get it. Of course, it is for the children. Right.......PatriotUSA

“I’ve preserved more than 3 million acres of
public lands for future generations. And I am not finished,” Obama
declared before signing a proclamation naming the Organ Mountains-Desert
Peaks National Monument.

Wednesday’s action marks Obama’s 12th use of the Antiquities Act to
protect lands officials say deserve special treatment, and supporters
are lobbying for the president to use his authority more often before he
leaves office. Several Utah areas — including Cedar Mesa, the San
Rafael Swell and Greater Canyonlands — have been touted as possible
candidates for monument designations.

During his State of the Union speech earlier this year, Obama said he
wants to work with Congress but would act on his own if it doesn’t move
on this issue.

Of all places, the
announcement today will give illegals an open pathway on the border with
Mexico directly to the U.S. Bundy style, the BLM moves again. Back in
2010, a leaked memo indicated Obama had his eye on 13 million acres.
Some monuments larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined. Much of
it rich in gas, oil and other minerals.

President Obama on Wednesday will declare a
national monument in southern New Mexico, delivering a win for
environmentalists but angering ranchers and local law enforcement, who
say the land restrictions will end up creating a safe haven for drug
cartels to operate within the U.S.

Mr. Obama will declare about 500,000 acres as
the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument. About half of that
land is expected to be set aside as wilderness, meaning it will be
closed to vehicles and construction.

Upwards to 40 percent of the United States land is
already under some form of government control or ownership — 800 million
to 900 million acres out of America’s total 2.2 billion acres.A
disturbing report out from Fox News this afternoon:

More than a dozen pristine landscapes, wildlife habitats
and scenic rivers in 11 Western states, some larger than Rhode Island
and Delaware combined, are under consideration by the Obama
administration to become America’s newest National Monuments — a
decision the administration can make unilaterally without local input or
congressional approval.

According to internal Department of Interior documents
leaked to a Utah congressman and obtained exclusively by Fox News, the
mostly public lands include Arizona deserts, California mountains,
Montana prairies, New Mexico forests, Washington islands and the Great
Basins of Nevada and Colorado — totaling more than 13 million acres.

Many of the areas under consideration by the Obama administration are known to house rich deposits of oil and natural gas.

“This is about opposing so many
thousands of acres that is going to create nothing more than a pathway
for criminals to get into this country to do their criminal acts,” Dona
Ana County Sheriff Todd Garrison told The Washington Times in a
telephone interview Monday.

The monument would cover hundreds of thousands of acres right next to the Mexican border.

Only Congress can declare a national
park, which stops most land uses. But under the 1906 Antiquities Act the
president has the power to declare national monuments, which offer
heightened environmental protections.

The ravings of a lunatic. George Galloway, friend of Saddam Hussein and his sons, friend of Bashar Assad, friend of Hamas, and now the friend of Hassan Nasrallah and Hizbollah. Watch this video as George sings the praises of Nasrallah and Hizbollah while defending their intervention in Syria at the side of Assad (George's friend).

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
(Ecclesiastes 1:9)

Tags:Chuck Missler, tyranny of the majority, Obama, Hitler, Kristallnacht, Nazis, Gestapo, political correctnessIf you want to use this video on your own website, please mention / link to the Patriot's Corner. Thanks!

"Barack Obama recently made the following statement to American families that are struggling to survive in this economy: "If you’re a family trying to cut back, you might skip going out to dinner, or you might put off a vacation." A few days after making that statement Obama sent his wife and children off on yet another vacation, this time to a luxury ski hotel in Vail, Colorado."

"Attorney General Eric Holder, who has suggested that critics of the Obama administration are motivated by race and referred to America as a “nation of cowards” on race issues while blasting Americans who resist more gun control laws, suggested that those opposed to President Barack Obama’s policy agenda of “fundamental transformation” are quietly prejudiced."

"HATE preacher Abu Hamza was facing life in jail last night after being found guilty of terrorism offences in a New York court. Hook-handed Hamza, 56, looked straight ahead as a jury sitting just half-a-mile from the site of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center delivered guilty verdicts on all 11 charges.

After 11 hours of deliberation they agreed that the one-eyed fanatical Islamist was a “trainer of terrorists” who recruited and indoctrinated young men at London’s Finsbury Park Mosque. He will be sentenced in September.

Immediately after the verdicts were announced last night Hamza’s lawyers said he intended to appeal.

He was said to have used the cover of religion, specifically Islam, to “hide in plain sight” under the noses of the British authorities for years."

"THE case of a pregnant Sudanese woman sentenced to death for refusing to give up her Christian faith has been taken up by the Italian government, who are now working to save her life."

"A teacher at one of the Birmingham state schools allegedly taken over by Muslim radicals in the so-called “Trojan Horse” plot has been reported to police after he broke into a female pupil’s mobile telephone to prove she was having a “forbidden” relationship with a boy.

The girl, who at 16 is over the age of consent, had her telephone confiscated by the teacher during a Sunday event at Park View School last month. Two members of staff told The Telegraph the device was then taken, without her permission, to a shop for its passcode to be broken, and its contents unlocked and examined by the school."

"Scotland Yard and MI5 ignored warnings that Britain’s most dangerous preacher of hate was establishing an international hub of terrorism in the heart of London two years before the September 11 attacks on the United States, a former spy has told The Telegraph.

Reda Hassaine, an Algerian who was paid by MI5 to spy inside the Finsbury Park mosque in north London, said he repeatedly warned the security agencies about the threat posed by Abu Hamza.

But each time he sounded the warning bell his handlers refused to take action, he claims."

Sweden is an insane place. Criticize or insult anyone or thing that the far left progressives hold dear, especially their failed policy of 'Asian, Muslim' immigration or attacking Islam and you will be arrested, fined and quite possibly jailed for merely speaking the truth.

A really screwed up country beyond what any rational, moral, person can comprehend.

Here is a short clip of Deputy Secretary of State for African Affairs Robert Jackson testifying before Congress on Boko Haram and the kidnapping of 300 Nigerian schoolgirls. He is answering a question from Senator Jeanne Shaheen, (D-NH). This is a fascinating exchange.

No, Senator. We don't want to get confused, do we?

Robert Spencer in Jihad Watch has more on what Mr Jackson is telling the folks up on Capitol Hill.

Does that not speak for itself, Mr Jackson and Senator Shaheen? Or is there a misinterpretation in the video-another explanation perhaps as to who told him to kidnap the girls and kill all the Christians?

"Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it,
leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences;
wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads
first to conformity and then to despotism."

********************

Why Liberty Dies

By Dr. Robert R. Owens

To understand why liberty is imperiled in our country today
we must first state clearly and unequivocally what is liberty. Then and
only then can we understand what is necessary for its preservation as
well as see what is undermining it today. Liberty is the absence of
coercion and the freedom to act upon your own will within the perimeters
of not infringing the freedom of action of others. The only way that
has been found among the societies of man to ensure, promote and protect
liberty is through the rule of law.
The rule of law means that government is not allowed to coerce an
individual except through the enforcement of a previously known and
explicitly stated principle of limited government. This principle
places a limit upon the power of government to legislate by calling into
question what sorts of laws are legitimate and which is not. This
looks beyond individual statutes to the very nature of legislation
itself. This differs markedly with the modern notion of the rule of law
that holds as long as all the actions of a government comply with the
law it is meeting the standard. It is well to remember that under this
definition both the Nazis and the Soviets operated under the rule of
law.

This modern definition is actually an oxymoron. If a government
passes a law which says that it can do whatever it wants than everything
it does is legal. Hitler passed the Enabling Act and accomplished this in one fell swoop.

Because the rule of law is an absolute limitation on all legislation
it cannot be a law of the same order as that passed by a legislature.
No Legislator can effectively limit himself through legislation since he
can always amend that legislation at a later date.

Constitutions can
make the infringement of pre-decided basic principles more difficult;
however, as we have seen in our own Progressive land of the Living
Document limitations can be re-defined away through courts and
tradition.

The rule of law can only prevail where its basic principles are an
organic part of the culture of the people. They must be part of the
commonly held beliefs and standards of a majority of the people or they
will be jettisoned as soon as they restrain that majority from following
the path of least resistance and living as they believe they should.
For if the rule of law is the common belief it will be followed closely
and guarded jealously. If it is seen as impractical or as an impediment
to life as the majority wish to live it, it will be soon rejected and
replaced. Such a society will gladly embrace tyranny and arbitrary rule
as long as they are convinced that they can now live as they want to
live.

In our nation we have built a rather impressive framework to restrain
the government: our Constitution. Though it has been interpreted into
meaninglessness in many ways it is still given lip service and is still
the penultimate law of the land. However there is one glaring hole
that is currently being exploited to make an end-run around its
remaining provisions: the rise of the Federal Bureaucracy.

We have gone to great lengths to limit what powers the elected officials
of our government possess and left open the door for appointed
officials to run rough shod over our lives. The legislature passes
vague thousand page laws and then the bureaucrats interpret them any way
they desire with little or no oversight. Elected officials, even the
perpetually re-elected gerrymandered creatures of today come and go.
The bureaucracy lives forever. When the elected officials cannot find
the power to impose the Progressive agenda they do it through the
bureaucrats they have appointed.

When they couldn't pass Cap-N-Trade, they imposed it
through the EPA. When they can't pass gun restrictions they have their
bureaucrats buy up all the ammunition and make it almost impossible for the people to obtain any. When they can't pass amnesty they impose it through regulations and edicts. The control of private land is taken through wet lands regulations.
Between the out of control legislators-for-life and their appointed
regulators we are told to do everything from what kind of light bulbs to buy to how many gallons we can use to flush a toilet.

Liberty is being eaten away inch by inch and day by day, legislated,
and regulated into oblivion. When our government can't pass laws or
impose regulations they will utilize the IRS, the NSA or anyone of a hundred of their alphabet agencies to spy on us or intimidate us into silence. Common Core is coming for the kids. Amnesty is coming for the jobs. Political Correctness is coming for free speech.

Unless patriots stand-up the country will fall. It will still be
called the United States of America. People will still say the pledge
of Allegiance. They will still sing the national anthem and salute the
flag but will it be the same country that our forefathers fought and
died for? Will it still be the land of the free and the home of the
brave? Or will it be something else: a place where the rule of law once
protected its citizens from the rule of men until the laws of men
overwhelmed the laws of nature and of nature's God?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of those who inspired the Framers of the Constitution, reminded us, "Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost."

Barry Goldwatersaid,
"Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it,
leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences;
wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads
first to conformity and then to despotism."

The enemies of freedom also speak of liberty. Vladimir Leninsaid, "It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed."

The controllers of men may try to use the language of liberty to
subvert liberty however, the God given spirit of man shall always strive
to become what God meant for us to be, free people in a free world."

Norman Vincent Pealesaid,
"Once we roared like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for
security! The solution for America's problem is not in terms of big
government, but it is in big men over whom nobody stands in control but
God."

Winston Churchill told us,
"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without
bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too
costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all
the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may
even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of
victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

And every school child should know that Patrick Henry famously said,
"Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of
chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course
others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"

During this month's annual Nakba* Week at UC-Irvine (my term), my friend Ted happened to engage in a conversation with some members of the Muslim Student Union, which was sponsoring the week of anti-Israel events. Ted same that of three MSU members he spoke to only one identified himself as a Palestinian. He then asked the others exactly what stake they and other MSU students who were not Palestinian had in the conflict. Well, we know, of course that the standard answer is that the MSU is committed to social justice anywhere in the world and all that stuff. The question, however, is valid. If you are an American Muslim of Pakistani, Iraqi, Afghani, Egyptian, Syrian, Iranian, or any descent other than that which is called "Palestinian", why is this one issue so important to you-so important that you hold a week of anti-Israel events every year? Why all the BDS movements on one college campus after another to divest from companies doing business with Israel?

Even if you agree to the proposition that Israelis and Jews have no valid claim to the disputed land, please explain why you are all over this issue and not involved in protesting a whole sea of human rights abuses that are going on in the very lands your families immigrated from. I also apply this question to organizations like CAIR, MPAC, ISNA, ICNA, and a host of other US Muslim groups made up of people from many diverse nationalities.

Why Israel? Why not protest the persecution of Christians in Egypt or Syria or Pakistan or the persecution of gays and Baha'i in Iran, for just a few examples? What about the constant horrors going on in Sudan? How about the horrors being perpetrated by Boko Haram in Nigeria? What about what Libyans did to four Americans in Benghazi? I have yet to see any university protests about that.

If it's "occupation" and "stealing land" you are worried about, why not protest Russia as it carves up Ukraine piece by piece? I have yet to see any BDS resolutions against companies doing business with Russia on any college campus. How about a boycott of Stolichnaya vodka?

Now I will answer my own questions. The reason is simple. The one commonality here between the Palestinians and American Muslims of so many different national origins is religion. The Palestinians are overwhelmingly Muslim. That is the connection. The connection in the US and Europe is the same as it is in the Middle East. Israel is a Jewish state in a sea of Muslim nations that will never accept Israel existing as a Jewish state. Why? Read your history. Read the Koran and its many damning references to Jews (and Christians). Read the Hadith. Read about the life of Mohammad, the Prophet and warrior. Is it any coincidence that as we speak, Christians are being persecuted and driven from Muslim countries? They would be doing the same to the Jews except the Jews were already driven out of the Arab countries in 1948-1950 and are now largely in Israel-protected from Arab attack by a strong military-not to mention that ever so evil "Apartheid Wall" that keeps Israelis and Palestinian suicide bombers apart.

Do you really think that the surrounding Arab countries give a hoot about the Palestinians, whom they have kept cooped up in squalid refugee camps ever since the 1948 fighting? Hardly. They are considered a nuisance and troublemakers. They are useful only as permanently displaced refugees to use against Israel as propaganda in world forums. Why have these Palestinians (Arabs) not been allowed to assimilate into Arab countries as citizens (exception: Jordan)? Why is there to this day a permanent UN refugee agency for Palestinians only (UNRWA)?

It is all hypocrisy. The next time you talk to one of these people crying about the fate of the Palestinian people, ask them why they have no similar outrage for all the other conflicts going on in the world. Bottom line: This conflict is not about who owned which plot of land 70 years ago. It is about religion.

* Nakba- The Arabic word for catastrophe, which has been coined to refer to the creation of the state of Israel.

Edward Alexander has an interesting article in Algemeiner on the phenomena of Jews, largely and unsurprisingly to be found in academia, who have an unnatural hatred for the Jewish state of Israel, so much so that they join forces with those who are trying to destroy the country and replace it with something called "Palestine".

Being a Gentile, I try to avoid the term, "self-hating Jew", leaving that for Jewish people to sort out among themselves. Yet I find it fascinating how so many on the Jewish left are lending aid and comfort to those who would kill every last Jew on the planet if they could. I have encountered many of these characters on college campuses when they come to speak. Norman Finkelstein comes immediately to mind, a defrocked professor traveling the globe looking for a paycheck and meaning to his life.

I also remember a bizarre guy named Jeff Halper, an American who immigrated to Israel where he found work as an anthropology professor. He now travels the lecture circuit, funded (like the others) by God only knows whom, lambasting his adopted land. At UC Irvine a couple of years back, I watched and listened as this character told his student audience about "spectral dust', something that the Israelis supposedly invented. Programmed with a target's DNA and spread into an area (like Gaza or the West Bank, presumably), it can seek out, find, and kill said suspect. This is what a UCI professor named Chuck O'Connell dragged into UCI to lecture to his sociology class. I literally walked out of the room laughing.

What else can you say about characters like Judith Butler and Richard Falk, the latter of whom until recently bore the presumptuous title of Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, where, apparently he didn't pay much attention to what Palestinians are doing to other Palestinians. These days the self-fashioned 82-year-old bard is also on the university lecture circuit poisoning students' minds about Israel accusing it of human rights violations. Never mind that Israel is the only democracy in a region filled by corrupt, violent regimes where human rights don't even pretend to exist.

How does some psychologist figure out this kind of mentality? It is far beyond my capability.

Excellent statement, just an excellent statement and this is pulled from the comments on the post below.

May come back and add my thoughts to this but for now, please read and I am very burned out. My thoughts are not as important as sharing this post. PatriotUSA

************************

Why Americans choose Slavery while the rest of the World begs to be Free…by Brittius

Hat tip to Brittius for this most excellent commentary

Being
a Patriot, is the obligation that goes part and parcel with being born
to this nation and the only way to be certain that this nation shall,
remain free. Those that do not understand this, are already, slaves.

I saw that with people in New
York City in the 1960s envying the French and Bohemian life style. I
spoke with a few former German soldiers, one an ex-Waffen SS trooper. I
spoke to two women that were French and, were in Paris 1940.

Much of the strict laws were made lax, as the country was
getting over the great Depression in 1940. My mother (still alive), says
here, we had it until 1938/1939. The women said there was little to eat
and absolutely nothing to waste. Not food, not anything. The government
in Paris let the people live as long as nothing like murder was going
on. The old German soldiers said pretty much the same thing. The Waffen
SS trooper said, people, begged for something easy. Anything easy and
getting over, without hard work or pain. People were poor and lowered
themselves and became poorer. Females, he said, were willing to have sex
for half bottle of wine and three cigarettes. Where did it get them?
Only lower. Only more depraved. Then what? Hitler took Paris, and all
the people were fleeing or hiding, except for a few partisan resistance
people, and they gave the German troops a damned good fight. Everyone
else ran, because it was easier to run.

People here, want the soft, lax life. A baby will always want
the mother’s teat, until they are made to, start eating solid food. Sin
is sweet. It is hard for people to migrate towards a slightly bitter
hard scrabble life, so they seek what is sweet, sin.

I remember going through hamlets that were hot with firefights.
NVA Regulars, not untrained VC. Fighting was brutal and also on
occasion hand to hand. I recall the smoke cover, smells, at times slow
motion of mayhem. Looking down the gun sights while moving, where your
eye goes, so does that front sight. You think as you were trained. I’m
only a teenager then, and suddenly, people run towards us, shouting in
Vietnamese, they are naked. Their hands up and fingers spread as they
run past us. A woman runs past holding a naked baby by one leg upside
down, and all I see are human figures, I do not think like a teenager.
Any one of them could try to kill us, my finger on the trigger. A shot
from a hut and it draws fire. We were not teenagers, we were
“terminators” for lack of a better word. The people wanted nothing to do
with dying, bleeding, and suffering.

In America, people will run to whatever feeds them, clothes
them, houses them, no different from any domesticated house pet. But who
do we notice? The old beat-up Tom cat, the battered junkyard dog, or
the animals that live in freedom. Even the lion in the zoo, seeks
Freedom, because it is bred into them.

Brittius is a United States USMC/DaNang Vietnam Veteran and true American Patriot.

"In time, however, a democratic republic came to occupy a large portion of the earth’s surface, and made itself felt as one of the most powerful members of the community of nations; and elective and responsible government became subject to the observations and criticisms which wait upon a great existing fact. It was now perceived that such phrases as ‘self-government’, and ‘the power of the people over themselves’, do not express the true state of the case. The ‘people’ who exercise the power are not always the same people with those over whom it is exercised; and the ‘self-government’ spoken of is not the government of each by himself, but of each by all the rest. The will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority; the people, consequently, may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of power. The limitation, therefore, of the power of government over individuals loses none of its importance when the holders of power are regularly accountable to the community, that is, to the strongest party therein. This view of things, recommending itself equally to the intelligence of thinkers and to the inclination of those important classes in European society to whose real or supposed interests democracy is adverse, has had no difficulty in establishing itself; and in political speculations ‘the tyranny of the majority’ is now generally included among the evils against which society requires to be on its guard."

This latest outrage from UCLA makes it clear that the brown shirts are taking over our campuses. At UCLA, candidates for student government office are being asked to sign a pledge that they will not takes trips to Israel funded by pro-Israel organizations.

Slowly getting gathering my marbles, or what I have left from the original set, back onto the pitcher's mound and I am starting to throw some heat. In other words, I am on my way back, whatever this may be worth. My absence has been extremely irritating but it also has been extremely necessary.

This is one fine rant, short, sweet and to the point that liberalism is a toxic disease. Nothing needs to be added by me. PatriotUSA

Saturday night rant by Steve

Okay, this is it for me tonight folks.

Liberals have given us same-sex marriage. They’ve given us a military
of limp-wrist homos, and placed our women on the front lines of combat
to cover their gay asses. They’ve given us $17 Trillion in debt and a
bisexual Negro president who hates his own race. Liberals continually
point out the nefarious acts of G.W. Bush and wonder why he wasn’t
“investigated” for his alleged crimes. They had control of both the
House and Senate since 2006. Maybe they should ask their Democrat
Congressmen and women why they didn’t arrest Bush for his crimes. Maybe
dumbass liberals should ask the Democrat majority in the House and
Senate at the time why they didn’t put together a select committee to
investigate Bush.

Wars and chaos, attacks on Christians and our kids in schools,
shoving perversion down their throats. They’ve tried to make God like
unto them. Sick, perverted, selfish, extremely hate filled trash who
condemn everything good and decent in America. Benghazi, Fast and
Furious, NSA spying, IRS targeting of conservative groups, massive vote
fraud, war on women and children, racial divide not seen since the
1960′s, on and on with pushing upon us every ungodly, demented
perversion known to mankind. Sports franchises afraid to not pick a homo
to their team, even when the gay player is substandard.

My prayer to God tonight is for God to swiftly fulfill his promise that “The fear of the wicked will come upon him.”

Lord God, the wicked think you are like unto them. Show
them they are deceived and are an abomination in your sight. Save those
who would repent and sin no more. Consume in your firey indignation
those arrogant reprobates who would slay the unborn whom you knew before
conception. Consume those who pervert your word to mislead others into
damnation. Demonstrate your intolerance for, sin yet love for the sinner
who repents and sins no more. The filth of their thoughts are not
yours, yet through arrogance and pride they consider themselves equal to
you. They aren’t even equal to the powers of darkness they follow to
their own damnation. And that damnation is just.

World War II was the most destructive conflict the world had ever known, and its course was decided to a large extent by three men: FDR, Josef Stalin (aka 'Uncle Joe') and Sir Winston Churchill.

At the Yalta conference in February 1945, one of a series of conferences between 'the big three', Roosevelt's health was failing. When Roosevelt retired one evening, exhausted, he complained to an aide that the day's meetings had taken a long time, because Churchill gave such long speeches. The aide said that nevertheless, they were good speeches. Roosevelt replied, 'Winston doesn't make any other kind.' 1

Apparently the police in Winchester, England disagree with President Roosevelt, and indeed, with the rest of the world, for they have declared the words of Winston Churchill to be verboten. On April 26th, a Saturday, the Winchester police arrested a British citizen for reading from one of Churchill's books.

Winston Churchill was an exceptionally talented wordsmith. He earned a living a a war correspondent before he entered politics, wrote a multi-volume history of World War II that is essential reading for anyone interested in that period, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 'for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.'2

The highly acclaimed historians Sir Max Hastings and Laurence Rees often cite Churchill's history of the war in their own books.3 If it is reasonable for writers of that calibre to rely on Churchill's written work, then it is reasonable for British citizens with an interest in world history to do the same.

Note that Section 4a of the Public Order Act 1986 states that it is a recognised defence for anyone who has been accused on the basis of that legislation to show that their conduct was reasonable.4 It is difficult to see how anyone could argue that reading one of Winston Churchill's books is an unreasonable act. Perhaps, playing devil's advocate, it might be said that Winston Churchill was, after all, a mere mortal and could not possibly have been right all the time, so Churchill's opinion cannot be regarded as the final word on any given subject. As anyone familiar with John Stuart Mill's On Liberty will attest, this is not an argument that supports having the Winchester police arrest someone for reading one of his books - quite the contrary!

The "bobbies" who arrested a British citizen for reading the words of Winston Churchill must face the fact that this applies to them too - and to their political masters. (Or are they not human after all?) As John Stuart Mill said, we are all fallible, and the only way to set yourself right when you are wrong is to hear opposing views, articulated by people who truly believe what they are saying.5 So if politicians or police officers in England today think that Islam is a religion of peace, and nothing else, ever, then they need to hear the views of Sir Winston Churchill, whether they want to or not.

Is it possible that Winston Churchill is right, and an entire crop of run-of-the-mill British politicians is completely wrong? Well it's happened before. And if it has happened once, then it can happen again.

"We must regard as deeply blameworthy before history the conduct not only of the British National and mainly Conservative Government, but of the Labour-Socialist and Liberal parties, both in and out of office, during this fatal period. Delight in smooth-sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts, desire for popularity and electoral success irrespective of the vital interests of the State, genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation, obvious lack of intellectual vigour in both leaders of the British Coalition Government, marked ignorance of Europe and aversion from its problems in Mr. Baldwin, the strong and violent pacifism which at this time dominated the Labour-Socialist Party, the utter devotion of the Liberals to sentiment apart from reality, the failure and worse than failure of Mr. Lloyd George, the erstwhile great war-time leader, to address himself to the continuity of his work, the whole supported by overwhelming majorities in both Houses of Parliament: all these constituted a picture of British fatuity and fecklessness which, though devoid of guile, was not devoid of guilt, and, though free from wickedness or evil design, played a definite part in the unleashing upon the world of horrors and miseries which, even so far as they have unfolded, are already beyond comparison in human experience." (Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm, Mariner Books, p. 80)

After the previous post I thought it best to get a little more serious and this is a very sad story indeed.

Take it from me who has passed a lot of time in the club car, tavern car, bar car, Pacific Parlor car on the Coast Starlight, I find this quite a tragedy. My family traveled by train almost exclusively when I was very young and from age 3, I have traveled 98% of time by train. I have never ridden commuter trains to work and back but I have known people who have. I am sure if I lived in this region and rode any commuter train that had a bar car, that is WHERE you would FIND ME especially on the commute home. Seems that nothing is safe nor sacred anymore. PatriotUSA

**********************

Last call for commuters’ bar car

Commuters in the bar car on the New Haven Line out of New York City,
Feb. 29, 1968. The Metro-North Railroad retired what were thought to be
the final bar cars in America on Friday, for decades an anachronistic
haven for weary commuters looking for a drink or camaraderie. Photo fromBarton Silverman / New York Times News Service

By Matt Flegenheimer • New York Times News Service /

There are those who sip discreetly
on subway trains, reaching for the paper bags in their coat pockets, or
pull flasks from their knapsacks in the darkened back corners of a city
bus.

Such is the stigma of drinking in transit, where the sloshed are supposed to have boarded that way.

But for decades, passengers on the Metro-North
Railroad have found a workaround amid the fake wood panels and
lounge-style seating of the bar car — the space where everybody may or
may not know your name, but none would dare cast a judgmental glare
about that fourth beer before the Stamford station.

“The two words you don’t want to hear on the bar
car,” said Steve Schleier, clutching his beer can en route to Fairfield,
Conn., on Thursday evening. “Last call.”

And yet, for the last commuter-rail bar cars
believed to be operating in the United States, it is indeed the end of
the line. The last of Metro-North’s old car fleet, introduced in the
1970s, has aged out of the system; the 7:07 p.m. train Friday from Grand
Central Terminal to New Haven was the bar car’s final ride before its
retirement at the hands of a new, barless model.

Since before World War II, when rail was king and
Prohibition was dead, the rolling saloon has been a national staple —
its contents relied upon to make the strangers less strange, the
commutes less interminable. At the end, there were only four bar cars
left, according to the American Public Transportation Association, all
on Metro-North.

On Thursday, the regulars were left to reminisce,
toasting the traveling Christmas parties and medium-stakes sports
wagers, softball league allegiances forged on the rails and love stories
that owed their start to the spirits of the New Haven line.

“There’s also been affairs,” said Terri Cronin,
chairwoman of the Connecticut Commuter Rail Council and a bar car
veteran from the East Norwalk stop. “I’ve heard.”

Somewhere near South Norwalk, the bartender, Danny
Wickline, 55, hushed the masses as they held cups aloft, interrupting a
well-attended dice game on his countertop.

“You’ve taken very good care of me,” Wickline said, looking up and down the bar. “I appreciate it. I love you all.”

The people loved him back, they said, many forming a line to kiss the bartender on the cheek, mouth or both.

An unfamiliar quiet curdled, briefly.

“Back to work!” a rider shouted, adding a profanity, as the crowd roared anew.

Even to defenders, the car is a curious anachronism,
culled from an era of liquid lunches and onboard cigars. Smoking was
banned inside cars in the 1980s, over some rider objections, but the New
Haven bar car has survived, outlasting vanquished drink service carts
on other commuter rail operations in the New York area — Metro-North’s
Harlem and Hudson lines, and the Long Island Rail Road.

At their peak, Metro-North said, there were 10 bar
cars. As the number has dwindled, travelers have grown fiercely
protective of the privilege, coordinating rides via emails and texts in
recent years to ensure the cars would fill.

A website, BarCar.com, founded in 1997, has
dedicated itself exclusively to celebrating “this social phenomenon that
exists in limbo between work and home.”

An onboard cocktail, the site reads, is “the perfect antidote for the grind that is business in the 20th century.”

That no one bothered to change the date is telling.
The bar car seems to have proved too much for this century, its romance
bewildering to detractors who saw little but a rolling office party with
overtaxed cup-holders and cushions absorbing wayward suds.

“Society has changed, DWI laws have changed, the
relationships of men and women have changed,” said Mitchell Pally, a
board member for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which
operates Metro-North. “You can wait the hour to get off the train and do
what you’re going to do.”

The bar car’s less social descendant, the cafe cars
of Amtrak, still sell beer and liquor amid the sandwiches and chips,
but offer little in the way of kinship, with travelers often returning
to their seats to imbibe in solitude.

Even the drink carts at Grand Central, where
Wickline will now work exclusively, have been subjected to modern
flourishes. Trail mix, protein bars and energy drinks are now available.

“It’s a rebranding,” said Aaron Donovan, a spokesman for the transportation authority.

Many riders were adamant that the branding had been
fine the first time. The bar car’s attraction was not the drinks, they
said, but the people who hoisted them, all while respecting a strictly
enforced code.

Extreme overindulgence was rare and diligently
policed. Morning interactions were brief, if they happened at all, lest
“you get a cup of coffee over your head,” Mark Ludlow, 43, from
Fairfield, said.

Riders recalled a fistfight or two, but those in neighboring cars could most likely say the same.

Some residents had turned to the bar car to network between jobs, or conduct business with potential clients.

And the specter of impaired driving, travelers insisted, was never cause for concern.

“These are professional people,” said Jesse Foote,
48, an energy broker from Fairfield, who drank water Thursday. “Make
sure your breath is good; drive right home.”

Many held out hope that the bar cars could return,
despite the high cost of their custom design. Officials in Connecticut
have summoned a team of consultants in a bid to conceive an affordable
bar car that could be retrofitted on the new models, known as M-8s,
though it is unclear if this is feasible.

Absent such an intervention, the regulars have
designated an unquiet car, second from the head, as the de facto bar on
each train, with promises of shared six-packs and undiminished cheer.

“They’re putting us out in the general population,” Paul Collins, 60, from Monroe, Conn., said by way of a warning.

Collins stepped out of the car, now filled with the
empty cups and stale air of a fraternity party as it neared Bridgeport.
Last stop, the speakers said moments later, last call. And then the bar
car chugged away.

This is something I do not get at all, the world series for birder's? A serious WTH moment for me, who loves birds and I think this is just a bad idea and is being ruined by the latest in technology.

In a world that is growing increasingly impersonal and dumber by the day, thanks to the ease of technology, people relying on said technology and the loss of something so pure and simple as a conversation between people and a hand written letter, it has come down to this.

I say leave this 'sport' to the traditional way, learning from experience and research. Technology has no place here. Can you see it now. zebra stripped referees calling for instant replays of who spotted what bird first. Here is a bird for you:

Birding or bird watching is on the verge of becoming an 'extreme sports level' whatever that is. Can you imagine you and your friends gathering around the television, computer or tablet to watch a riveting, fast action paced couple of hours birding? What is next, the NBL or National Bird League?

At birders’ world series, controversy over tech

By Corey Kilgannon and Emily S. Rueb /
New York Times News Service

Pete Dunne and Benjamin Van Doren are devout birders
who share a passion for identifying rare species, recording their
sightings and competing in birding events known as Big Days.

But as they prepared for the biggest Big Day of all,
today’s World Series of Birding in New Jersey, their technological
approaches could hardly be more disparate.

Van Doren, 20, a sophomore at Cornell, has a $2,500
camera setup and an iPhone stocked with digital field guides, apps that
play recordings of bird songs and help him, with GPS, home in on where
he might find certain species.

Dunne, 62, has been preparing a bit differently. He
refuses to bring a camera and keeps his cellphone turned off. He eschews
birding apps and digital libraries in favor of the handwritten journal
he has kept since he was 7. The proliferation of digital photography and
other technology alters the whole dynamic of birding, he said, “getting
away from the art of field identification.”

It was all leading to a regrettable mindset, he added, of “Shoot first and identify later.”

Not long after professional baseball came around to
instant replay, the booming world of competitive birding, once seen as a
refuge from the clatter of the modern world, is debating how much it
should embrace technology. It is as close as birding, long proud of its
honor system, has come to an identity crisis, particularly over the
issue of whether photography should be required to prove a spotting. In
debates among birders, the encroachment of smartphones and digital
cameras has become inseparable from another touchy issue, the matter of
questionable sightings, known as stringing.

The world series is held every May throughout New
Jersey, a major migration stop for birds heading north, and the event
routinely attracts roughly 1,000 of the world’s top birders, who will
race around the state from midnight to midnight, often in four-member
teams, trying to identify as many species as they can. Their reward will
be bragging rights and the Urner-Stone Cup, which resembles a miniature
version of hockey’s Stanley Cup, although there are no cash prizes.

The competition, which also raises money for
conservation, does not require photo evidence, and scoring remains on
the honor system, although contestants who claim to have seen or heard
rare birds can expect to be questioned by other teams about details. The
rules do not allow the use of digital gadgets in the spotting or
hearing of birds. Recorded calls cannot be played in the open, where
they could inadvertently — or intentionally — induce birds to respond,
for example. But birders are permitted to refresh themselves — in their
cars, only — with recorded bird calls.

The pro-tech camp argues that it is silly to prohibit tools that educate birders, make birding more welcoming for novices.

“It is bringing a new breath of air into the
competitions,” said Scott Whittle, a commercial photographer from Cape
May, N.J., who has a $10,000 photo setup. He is helping develop an app
called Bird Genie that recognizes and identifies bird calls in the
field.

He said he began birding six years ago and
photographed his sightings “because I knew I wasn’t a good enough birder
for people to trust me.”

The verification of sightings and the fight against
stringing — arguable sightings by inexperienced, overeager or simply
cheating birders — are two of birding’s most pressing issues and form
the main argument for the use of photos.

Birding’s popularity, fueled in part by the recent
films, “The Big Year” and “A Birder’s Guide to Everything,” is
approaching an extreme-sport level, with adrenaline-pumped teams putting
in sleepless days.

The American Birding Association has begun
discussions to revise portions of its code of ethics, said Jeffrey
Gordon, the association’s president. The code serves as a guideline for
birders, although competition organizers are free to make their own
rules. Gordon said that what little there was in the code regarding
technology — there is a mention, for example, of curbing the use of tape
recorders — has likely gone unchanged since being established a decade
ago, “before people were walking around with libraries of bird songs in
their pocket.”

While the honor system remains paramount, Gordon
said, photographs, provided they have not been altered, can offer “a
higher standard of evidence,” especially for rare sightings, and for
newer birders who have yet to establish reputations.

“I hear young birders joking around saying, ‘Photos
or it didn’t happen,” he said. “The expectation is that if you report
something rare, you’re going to need a photograph. And I only see that
increasing.”

The association created a new category of
competition: Photo Big Days. Last month, Whittle and Tom Stephenson, a
Brooklyn-based birder, organized a Photo Big Day in Texas and competed
as well, photographing 209 birds in 24 hours, which the birding
association has recognized as a record for North America.

Even purists like Dunne, a New Jersey Audubon
Society official who founded the world series, said any tool that made
birding more accessible was welcome. But introducing them to
competitions goes against the trust implicit in birding, the purists
said, and turns what should be a contest of devotion and skill into a
free-for-all where tech wizardry and expensive cameras become the de
facto entry requirements.

Teams in the world series recruit members who can
identify bird calls and can scout where targeted species are likely to
be seen. To prepare for the event, Van Doren’s Cornell team has spent a
week driving around New Jersey using apps to log where specific birds
have been spotted. They are not allowed to use apps to acquire new
information during the event, but they can use them to refer to
previously gathered information.

Van Doren acknowledged that technology should have
its limits. The day will come, he predicted, when binoculars themselves
will be able to identify birds. “That would be lame from a birding
perspective,” he said, “because it would take the skill out of it.”

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